Found a sick/injured cat. *may be graphic*

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Well this morning I got up a bit early figured you know, I'd enjoy the day instead of sleeping in too late. But I went out to smoke as I do in the morning and saw a cat laying in the grass. At first I thought it was just chilling and stretching/rolling on the grass. But I went up to it and realized it was like convulsing and thrashing around some, sort of making running motions with its legs. It seemed to still be conscious as well but in a lot of pain, didn't seem it could even make noises of being in pain....So over-all just a very disturbing/upsetting thing to see.

I don't know if it ingested something poisonous, got like hit by a car and suffered internal damage or something, if someone deliberately hurt it or if it was some kind of sickness/disease or condition that caused it.


Anyways, I called animal control and they sent some people out who took away the cat, not sure there was much they could do for the poor thing aside from euthanizing it to put it out of its misery...I have no idea how long it was out there like that before I found it. But that is all I could really do...I didn't really want to touch the cat in case it had some kind of contagious disease or something, otherwise I would have tried to comfort it more till they showed up.

You did the right thing. I suppose you could call them to see what happened next, if it's important to you to know.

Edited to add: In fact, now that I think about it, I did something similar when a beautiful German shepherd dog showed up outside our garage, clearly unwell. That was many years ago.

Well I strongly suspect they had to euthanize it. I just hope they were able to provide it some comfort in its last moments. I mean even if it survived the way it was convulsing and writhing and how its eyes looked not sure it would recover from the damage. I mean it looked sort of like a seizure but was going on for at least 20 minutes, probably longer.

Just a little worried now though because there was another cat I've interacted with before also in the yard, way on the other side from the one I found. But just has me a little worried if it was poison or a disease that one could have gotten exposed to. Though she was acting perfectly normal, and nowhere near the sick cat...so hopefully not.

The information you could get from Animal Control might be useful regarding this other cat.

Anyway, you did a good thing.

Also I would like as an ultimate life goal be able to help animals, like conservation or helping stray and feral animals...so with that kind of a goal I am sure I will have to deal with more upsetting situations if I decide to pursue that kind of thing. Like if I had, had the means I would have taken the cat to a vet myself and attempted to pay for care but I am not in that kind of position...so all I could do was call animal control and have the them take it away and hopefully helped it or kindly as possible put it out of its misery. But I want to have been able to have done more....

I would tend to doubt it—but there is a very slight possibility that the cat was rabid.

That, alone, is why one must be cautious with animals they don’t know. Especially if they are not really educated in animal diseases.

Well that is why I did not touch it, I feel bad too like maybe I could have tried to pet it or do something to make it more comfortable. But I didn't know if it would be safe to do so. I mean not sure what I saw were rabies sympoms, if so it must have been the late stages. The only other unfortunate possibility is that it was poisoned.....But yeah I guess I did what I could.

What a sad thing to see early in the morning-and poor cat. You did the right thing.